the calculus will do it because when you push two calculi and then two more you end up with four calculi

a man will tell you because he knows (or at least because he believes*)

a man and a calculus might both tell you correctly that 13*13=169

but on a calculus it is more likely to give an error like 168 or 170 (the man using it accidentally pushing a caclulus too many or to few as compared with intention) or even making it 13*12 or 13*14 (making the additions one time too many or too few)

in the mind it is more likely to be an error of 163, because that looks closer to 13

which is a clear indication that mind is something other than matter, it is something that can experience (if not itself at least) mathematics, as calculi cannot: such a difference has to be ontological

Then I checked what Fr Curtis was talking about and added:

"the Fathers of the Church talk a lot about the suggestion of demons but this implies a loss of freedom with respect to our thoughts."

No more than suggestions from mortal friends or foes.

A suggestion of the demon can be accepted or rejected. St Ignatius of Loyola set up a few rules for discerning whether an "inspiration" (idea that strikes you) comes from the Good Spirit or the Bad one.

Looking eagerly for approval or disapproval in contemporary "conscience" was not one of his criteria.

And he was a hesychast before being anything like a scholastic, never ceased to be.

Father is there a problem with the idea that ideas can be received in the mind without them passing through the eyes and ears? I thought the fathers were talking about rather than thought being done for you. If you can be aware of God that way I do not see a troblems with other ideas coming in the same manner.

‎@Fr Christopher, I have no problem about the means by which the idea is received- either directly to the mind or via the senses. Nor do I have a problem about the freedom we have to acceptor reject the thought, baring in mind our state of sin which makes that very difficult!! But the question comes from the interplay between psychology and theology, in the former the thought coms from one's deepest inner self, whereas in the latter it seems that th thought is external in origin. If it is external in origin, we have the option of 'blaming' external conditions for thoughts that occur to us, whereas if we have internally originating thoughts we can't make that claim. It does touch on the intersubjective nature of 'self' versus 'other'.

Since I am a Christian I believe there are angels and devils. And that I have the option of blaming external conditions. Including for thoughts occurring to me.

Especially I do so, when one seems to be very much what person X or movement Y or Church Z has more materially said or implied to me, but where I have equal materially verified knowledge that it is false.

Which is why I was indulging in "polemics" (was that your word? no, diatribe) a few weeks ago.

Which is also why I took care to say today "one of these half heterodox neohimerites with which I FORMERLY used to be in communion".

It is also why I back when communicating with them asked one priest more than once what he was praying aboutwhen praying for me. I got no answer.

"But the question comes from the interplay between psychology and theology, in the former the thought coms from one's deepest inner self, whereas in the latter it seems that the thought is external in origin."

The "psychological" idea is atheism in the study of the human psyche.

No one has ever claimed - except perhaps Calvin - that man is incapable of originating thoughts from himself. That is indeed a lack of freedom, but does not follow from existence f angels or devils or their power to originate thoughts in each other and in us (from greater to lesser, according to St Thomas Aquinas).

Oh, there are others who do claim incapability of generating thought, those who claim it does not exist. Like materialist atheists.

Even if a good and true thought originates in self, it also originates from God, and it behoves a Christian to give thanks for it, as long as he regards it as such.

*Knowing two and two are four implies either - which none has except God - an exhaustive induction, or, which is much simpler and accessible to us too, a valid deduction, like this one:

more than is said so that if a thing is more than another and that other than a third, it is also more than that third, ipso facto and one can define by how much or - as here - by how many something is more than something else

two · is · one more than one (definition)three · is · one than two (definition)

so: one more than three · is · one more than one more than two

four · is · one more than three (definition)one more than three · is · one more than one more than two

so: four · is · one more than one more than two

one more than one more than two · is · two more than two (from definition)four one more than one more than two

so: four · is · two more than two

Believing it includes believing it because of an incomplete induction and a math teacher who tells it always holds true, but even here one can talk about knowledge as soon as one has a true intuition why even an incomplete induction should be "as on all other occasions".

But stupidity like that has seemingly happened to me when I have tried to:

a) get my texts printed and sold, get my compositions played (I have heard a lot of yes, yes, we will - and then no getting back to me)

b) simply get either teeth fixed without social insurance or get a social insurance open for people who are paupers not looking for work and giving me access to toth care.

As a result, my teeth ache day after day, my smile is ugly, and I am loads of money behind debt payments to the Swedish study loan system.

One reason could be sheer lack of talent. Let us test it: these statistics (click link) come from the blogger sites own system, as every one having a blogspot blog can verify. A sheer non-talent would not have been read over Russia, US, France, Netherlands, Germany to name the five big countries. A French-man would possibly be nit-picking if I was wrong in translating "response" (my try="response") as anything else than "answer" (="réponse") in title. As an English, German or Swedish speaker would (answer=Antwort=svar; response=Widerhall/Antwort=gensvar/response). But that does not account for non-printing and non-playing of my texts and music in non-French countries. Indeed does not account for non-playing of my music even in France.

Another reason could be people having tried to send me money for my work but failing due to police interference due to stupid (at least among Christians) misgivings about me.

Like this, which I got in my mail, but which is too stupid to be genuine:

Payment Release Instruction From The Federal Bureau Of Investigation Attention Funds Beneficiary, This is to inform you that it has come to the notice of the federal bureau of investigation (FBI) that the sum of $10.5 million united states dollars was transferred from the central bank of Nigeria to the bank of America here in the united states, bearing your name as the beneficiary. We did not believe this at first time until we saw the transfer for confirmation, then we had no other option than to place the funds on hold until you are able to prove to us that you are not a terrorist or a money launderer, by obtaining what is called a diplomatic immunity seal of transfer certificate from the funds originated country. Note that we have done a proper investigation on this transaction and from our investigation, this funds truly belongs to you and it is not a scam, but we have instructed the bank of America not to release the $10.5 million to you until you prove the legitimacy of the funds you are about to receive. As a matter of fact, you will be charge for money laundering and terrorism, if you fail to provide to us the above mentioned certificate from the funds originated country,and if you are found guilty as charged, you will go to jail.

You have just only 72 hours to prove to us you are not a terrorist, failure to comply with our instruction, you will be arrested and detained until this matter is settled. Meanwhile we have your full contact address which makes it easier for us to arrest you when ever we want to. We are going to direct you on how to obtain the required document from the funds originated country in our next email to you, and your funds valued $10.5 million will be released to you as soon as the required document is obtained. Therefore you have been advised to get back to us immediately you receive this email or you will be arrested by the FBI, You have been warned.

For more informations and quick response, reply back to us immediately.

YOURS FAITFULLY, ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR

And if the guys who are deciding not only against me, but against others deciding for me think they are doing me a favour, they are about twice as stupid as the pseudo-letter from the FBI.

dimanche 5 décembre 2010

Back in the Tenth Century a King of the Franks and his Queen stemming from Saxony would ask a monk "How will we be able to know when Antichrist arrives"? Adso of Melk (just kidding!) I mean Adso Dervensis to the answer. Accepted criteria include having a very huge megalomania and getting away with it. It also includes getting mainly away with it with - poor folks, God keep them pure from that at least this Hanukkah of theirs - the Jews.

Eleven centuries later (or a few decades less than that actually) concerns include getting out of Afghanistan and getting - therefore - to negotiate with a Talib, with one of the Taliban. Acceptable criteria for being their herald include coming dressed like one. Or - if the "dirt" part of this link is no exaggeration - less clean than a real one. If the story is true it is no good preparation for a real talk with the Taliban.

I mean, Louis IV and Gerberga mainly required eating and drinking swell on courtly occasions, when in private they ate less than usually, and were scrupulous about Friday fasts. And Adso was paid the ink and paper and rather simpler food than even the royal couple. I think tax payers had less reason to grumble back then. So had Christians for whom First Amendment does not amount to replacing Ten Commandments with Georgia Guidestones.

jeudi 2 décembre 2010

1) Dominic Johansson has been taken away from his parents. This link describes why. And that is my quarrel, not with all the people, but with the authorities in place in the country - my country - that I left in March 2004.

2) It is a Swedish judge who has asked the founder of WikiLeaks to be extradicted. Nature of his crime? Probable guess or at least a possible one:1 If in Sweden a woman consents to sex with "that hateful object outside the pharmacies", if during intercourse it bursts and if the man does not immediately withdraw, the woman can charge him with rape since she had not consented to "unprotected sex". Lessons to be learned?

a) In Sweden it is current for certain women (not practising Christians, obviously) to want to avoid pregnancies while "having fun" (or even worse chosing partners whose health they are not acquainted with), so much that they call out about rape when risking a visit (maybe murderous) to the gynecologist. Guess why a man who wanted a Duggar style family first got no family at all and then got accused of being a closet case making deliberately impossible any realistic ("realistic" for Sweden) contact with opposite sex;

b) even a paid homosexual male prostitutes should not rely over much on that rubber thing to keep away from AIDS. They do burst once in a while, and withdrawing in such a moment poses mental difficulties, so abstinence is safer.

The Swedish prosecutor’s office said almost two weeks ago that a court in Stockholm had approved its request for the arrest of Mr. Assange to face questioning on suspicion of “rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion” — charges that he has strongly denied and that WikiLeaks has dismissed as “dirty tricks” meant to punish him for his organization’s work. Appeals by Mr. Assange to suspend the warrant have been unsuccessful.

The accusations were first made against Mr. Assange after he traveled to Sweden in mid-August and had brief relationships with two Swedish women.

According to accounts they gave to the police and friends, each had consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange that became nonconsensual. Mr. Assange has portrayed the relationships as consensual and questioned the veracity of the women’s accounts.

"What fewer people may know is that Pope Clement VIII said of Hooker's book, the very same one that influenced Locke, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: 'It has in it such seeds of eternity that it will abide until the last fire shall consume all learning.' This, of course, in spite of Hooker's status as a heretic."

Locke in Second Treatise Chapter V agrees with Pope Leo on ONE instance of elementary gain of property rights, but would have disagreed about the rights of dispossessed Connaught Papists to return to Ulster.

Some Anglicans - notably the Anglo-Catholics avant le mot - were less objected to by Catholics than other Prots.

Since both have it from Cicero, less than a Catholic credential for Locke.

But if your pragmatic or realistic purpose is simply defending the US Constitution, and your seeing attacks on Locke as indirect attacks on it, since Founding Fathers had read Locke more than say Rousseau or what's his name again [Hobbes, he is even, along with Calvin, honoured by comic strips nowadays] "Leviathan", the thing to do might just be, not to say that Locke has a complete Catholic philosophy of property, but to say that nothing really objectionable from Locke got via FF to the Constitution they wrote.

Locke is not social democratic at all. I reject the attempts some make to wring a welfare-state out of his work.

He has one revolutionary principle though: that the property is meant for those who work on it and not those who quarrel about it - if you remember that quote from Treatise II Chapter V. It was of course meant against the Catholic inheritors in Connaught of properties in Ulster worked the last generation before him by either Protestants or their remaining poor Catholic tenants.

You see the same thing in "Responsible rich" who dissuaded Bush from abolishing inheritance duty by appealing to "it is not good to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth". Locke attacks non-laborious means of acquiring property, not because of fraudulence as with ususry, but because of non-laboriousness, as with inherited titles, as with gifts, as with immemorial custom, and so on.

He also has one capitalist thought that amounts to a capitalist fallacy - not in disfavour of wellfare state, that might not be a fallacy but - in favour of usury and unsound over-investment.

He claims that as soon as there is an exchange goods that does not rot for being kept - gold - hoarding ceases to be wasteful.

Now, there are cases of late when attempts at hoarding gold have become wasteful and very much so.

Lyndon LaRouche, if you know about that guy, claims that real physical production (except of condoms and pills and toys including sex toys) is being hampered by Wall Street speculation bubbles.

In the conflict between Fr. Tryphon and Starbucks (a company which fortunately bucked back) Locke might have been adduced to favour Starbucks approriating the label "Christmas Blend" - and suing Fr. Tryphon for having in his monastery another blend that the monastery called "Christmas Blend". Locke does not really allow for the Commons, where a strip of wood or a general description of merchandise such as "Christmas Blend" may stay even against people wanting to appropriate it. Swedish legislation of immemorial times has a legislation favouring the Commons.

You may own a piece of wood in the sense that you may have a right to cut down the trees there or build a house there. But even so you do NOT own the wild berries that grow there or the mushrooms that grow there. They are still anyone's property who deigns to pick them.

Hence you have no right to fence in all of your wood. You can fence in only such places where you want your cows to stay and not to stray (and owning the land means no other man may graze his cows there without your permission, as of everywhere). Did Locke sufficiently allow for difference between staking a piece of land and picking a res nullius to accept that the berries and mushrooms and tenting space (as long s not intruding in owners privacy) of my land may still be res nullius, anyone's for the picking?

By contrast, St Thomas does give a theory of private property meaning it does not absolutely have to be private property in the full juridical sense at all. But he was thinking of feudal property. In practise a feudal lord does about as he pleases on his land - but he cannot sell it, or else he must "sell" his title along with it. Since in feudal theory the real owner is the King or Emperor. Since you "own" its usufruct and tenures only insofar as the King or Emperor "owns" you for a purpose of military or judicial kind. Did Locke allow for such half-ownership - or was he not a bit anti-feudal?

"But a king—***a king without any real power, that is***—is such an ennoblingly arbitrary, such a tender and organically human institution."

Or maybe he was not at all interpreting Tolkien?

JDB:Perhaps he is making a distinction between power and authority?CWK: Or the distinction between compulsion and love.

While it is true that Kings had more authority than power in Middle Ages, they did have some real power too.

Magnus Ladulås ("barn's lock") has this surname because he initiated a legislation barring the peasants' barns from getting gate-broken by nobles roaming around. He also changed the hereditary custom of no female inheritors at all (they enjoyed whatever heritage their husbands had) to each sister inheriting the hald part of what each of her brothers inherited (it took yet a while before we had iheritance equality in Sweden).

Magnus Eriksson, who lived a bit later, made away with Westrogothian, Ostrogothian, Sweonic, et c laws and after him Sweden had only the Town Law and the Country Law up to when we got a unified law in the XVIII-th C.

Both were kings before the union with Denmark and Norway (Finland was our own colony).

It seems the legislation process was in equal shares between king and representation, as was again the case between 1809 and 1917.

In the Letter, Tolkien did advocate a King being able to fire his prime minister for disliking the colour of his neck-tie. Not really a question of advocating powerless royalty

CWK:The old Kings ruled by custom as much if not more so than by force of law.

I have heard that too, but I am not sure if it is quite true for the Mediaeval period.

I have heard about Roman Law. I have heard about Visigoth law in Spain and Westrogoth law in Sweden. And of course these newer Swedish legislations. And King Ina's law, that seems to be a simplification of Justinian's CIC, for England, and Salic Law that seems to be an overriding exception (mainly in the inheritance department) overriding relevant parts but nothing else of Justinian.

Of course these written codes incorporated from start as much custom as they did legislation. And in jurisprudence there was and is a thing called "prejudicate" - where law is imprecise a court may look back to court decision so and so, which amounts in a way to a kind of custom.

For later periods, Medieval real law has sometimes survived as custom where not kept up as written law.

Non a rege lex, sed a lege rex - was a Mediaeval saying.

A Deo Rex, a Rege Lex - was a Jacobite one - disputed, I think by St Robert Bellarmine.

mercredi 24 novembre 2010

If so much as Seraphim Rose followed Guenon, for a while, does it make Guenon holy? St Augustine followed Manicheans for a while, does that make Manicheans holy?

Seriously: I have NOTHING against Pagan mythology except the passages where it most clearly implies a Pagan "theology", like Theogony (which also is not tradition, but private revelation), but I do find still-pagan philosophies a bug. Platonists and Aristotelians had the good sense to convert to Christianity en masse, followers of the poor mortals Krisna and Siddharta Gautama so far have not.

Even followers of that other poor deluded or deliberately deluding dead man Odin/Wotan, have had the sense to get Christian. In the Yorkshire mission it was after all the Odinist priest who destroyed his own temple after hearing a Christian missionary.

And the first Norwegian dynasty includes the posterity of Odin. Some say the brother in law of Burgundian king Gunthari, variously known as Sigurd and Sigfrid, descended from that man. It does not mean some incubus raped someone and got credit for it under the name of Odin, like with Hercules and Zeus, or Romulus and Mars: in Northern tales the Gods who had posterity walked around. And since one of the "divine" titles of Odin was the "god of segd"=runic magic, I find it a pretty safe guess he was a magician.

As for Evola, I hold him co-responsible for the evil movement around Georgia Guidestones. God curse his memory.

"The same fire, the love of God, that ignites in the hearts of the faithful transmutes in the experience of those who reject it into the fire of hell; it purifies the former, but burns the latter."

OK: God is a natural force without will or direction. He does not inflict punishment but is automatically punishment. Hmmm ... no, I do not think this makes God more mercyful than the view of St Augustine and St THomas Aquinas.

Or than that of Dante, obviously.

And it is not what St Isaac the Syrian says, either.

St Augustine says as much as St Isaac: God has so much love for the hardened sinners, he refuses to destroy them - and so much hatred for their unjustice, he refuses to make them happy.

AR:

If tormenting someone eternally is "love" give me hate.

Ch A G:

It's more to do with the fact that your decisions/actions in this life (if they are, for want of a better term "bad") mean that God's fire burns you instead of nourishing you, as is God's intention.

GC:

Since God has not made us automata, and we are free to think and feel as we wish, he does not force us, even in eternity, to accept His love. A crude analogy might be music: a classical music lover might find sitting through a pop concert a really unpleasnant experience, and vice versa. People who have spent murderous lives might find a Kingdom of Love very painful

[@ Ch:] Well, that is Eric Simpson's view, I think it wrong.

St Augustine says: God loves everything he has created, but the spiritual creation (angelic and human creatures) more than the irrational one, the blessed and elect more than the damned and foreknown, and most of all the Humanity of Christ whose members the elect are.

Fr Timothy Curtis:

Therein lies an important difference between Orthodox and western forms of Christianity

Not between St Augustine and St Isaac, as far as I can see.

Eric Simpson takes a summing up of two patristic quotes that do not add up to his conclusion. Even if St Isaac the Syrian is a saint and a Church Father.

To take this a bit further (risking to be thought of as a lover of diatribe), there is a certain connexion to hypercorrectness and to V ec. Council.

The emperor asked that council to condemn 15 Origenist theses. All bishops except the Pope did so.

Hypercorrectness: over-emphasising a difference. When learning Latin syntax, I once was told I was too much avoiding the Latin constructions that correspond exactly to Swedish ones. A risk I think Orthos are running in the West, when relearning their own confession after getting used to Western thought sometimes as if they were learning it for the first time, as I was learning Latin.

There is also a real diatribe against Christianity, some people talk about a vengeful God. Some Christians try to please them, as some try to please Evolutionists and Heliocentrics.

But that is brought out not only by eternal damnation, but also by Flood and destruction of Sodom, and by Egyptian army sunk in the Red Sea. And one early Church Father says that in the era of NT this is stricter, since punishment is no longer death but precisely damnation.

We are not automata - it is now that I am answering Gillian Crow, yesterday at 10:30 was @ Ch. - but neither is God. Someone who has lead a murderous or harrassing life might be considered bad company in Heaven by the ones God wants to have there. Such a one not getting to Heaven might in one way be his own free decision, but in another way God's decision according to His justice.

Thinking of God's love as an automaton, as a natural force without intention, as something that hurts without ever intending to hurt anyone, because the hurt ones are those that are not agile enough to get the right angle of contact, is debasing the divine majesty. That is why I am against Eric Simpson's "alternative Orthodox view". And will have no communion with people calling it Orthodox.

My dear diane, I was very pro-Hilarion until I read his polemics against the Catholic view of marriage as the sensuality of sex being primarily compensated by the good of offspring. He argues (in the Catechism in his website) that if so one would only have sex once a year or so. Which is wrong.

The attitude “primarily for offspring” requires us not to use any means of preventing conception while a couple is enjoying sex. Not to limit sex to “the only coitus in which a child is conceived” since it cannot be foreseen in each case if a child will be conceived or not, not even if a child has been conceived until menstruation does not come as usual.

St Robert Bellarmine was sure no Pope would legislate for what was in itself wrong. Contraception clearly belongs as much to that as usury or even more, and it is notorious that Orthodox used to be more lax on usury and are more lax on contraception than Roman Catholics.

MY problem with orthodox Church is not whether their sacraments have grace or not, but whether I need and will get these graces from their Sacraments. If ecumenic faction requires me to accept contraception and anti-ecumenic faction requires me to regard any Papism, including counterreformation and St Robert Bellarmine, as vile heresy, even requiring me to misconstrue like what St Robert Bellarmine says and loathe his theology for what they think is and I know is not in it, obviously I am no-where near getting any Orthodox Sacraments.

Especially if both factions require me to regret as heavily sinful what I think was righteous in my past and is righteous in my present.*

This sunday I celebrated the Feast of Christ the King, last sunday before All Hallows day, instituted by Pope Pius XI in St Nicolas de Chardonnet. I have not been to an “Orthodox” liturgy since Pentecost, in the sermon of which it was probably Benedict XVI who was maligned as scandalously uncharitable, without the mention of a name, but with clear reference to recent media hubbub.

I know that being in communion with maligners will not get me to heaven.

[I did not read this comment or even the article at first, but answered only Joe's first presenting comment] The article deals with a degenerate academic scumbag who compared having children to littering. These people must be opposed and stopped. And you traditionalists reading this had better understand the value of liberty in opposing these people. These are the people who are in charge of the state. They won't be replaced with Christians.

My dear: growing less wheat over all or making less bread would equal genocide. Making less transports, letting bread eaters be in higher proportion wheat growers would not equal genocide. Making less electricty, i e making bread eaters be in less proportion TV watchers, radio listeners, cinema goers would not equal genocide.

As for saying the old fascism was genocide, I take exception at such a BIG slur against Mussolini. Or against smaller fascisms: Franco, Salazar, Dollfuss + Schuschnigg. If you mean that NAZISM was genocide, say so.

[Then I read above comment but still not article]

"The article deals with a degenerate academic scumbag who compared having children to littering. These people must be opposed and stopped."

I would not call that ecofascism, but malthusianism. It is an insult both to ecologists and to fascists to compare Georgia Guidestones cultists to either.

"And you traditionalists reading this had better understand the value of liberty in opposing these people."

I do.

"These are the people who are in charge of the state."

Too true.

"They won't be replaced with Christians."

If so it is about time for Our Lord to come back.

I also understand the use of liberty in getting more ecological. I mean: in France, parents are required by law - or so I was told in 2005 - to have electricity in their houses. If they have not, they are given the choice of installing electricity (if need be on public expenses) or losing their children.

Reading the article I am reminded why I hate the people who have so far succeeded in stopping me from marriage and from rearing children.

It goes to the heart to see what one is missing.

And yes, both Trad Cath anti-liberals and people like you have been collaborating with the Helen Fisher types of my Swedish background.

Both kinds have pretended what the Helen Fishers have pretended: to wit I were unfit to be a family man. Both types have pretended I am unfit to earn my living as a writer:

a) because as ecologically conscious, and against electric over-consumption, I have been made out as being an "ecofascist" not very far from Helen Fisher;

b) the antiliberals have thought me too libertarian about living off begging (while keeping writing without pay);

c) libertarians like you have bundled me along with the people who attack liberty. Because I attack some sorely abused and not so necessary economic liberties. Such as taking interest. Or merging companies.

I am not part of, at least I do not want to be part of a future unchristian anti-liberal government - but opposing it is to my moral consciousness not identical with attacking all and sundry anti-liberal politicians in human and historic memory.

I am not part of and at least do not want to be part of a libertarian-on-all-accounts establishement that erodes the state to nothing and puts all power in private big corporations. Or informal networks.

Dollfuss and Schuschnigg - worst thing that happened to Jews was getting into fistfights. Franco and Salazar - helped Jews escape from Hitlerian persecution, though Franco limited the offer to Shepharads.

Mussolini: start - 38, no anti-Jewish racism; 38 - 43, racial segregation in marriage laws; 43 to the end: Mussolini was captive of the Germans except a few days as captive of partisans.

The mayor of Assisi was a fascist, and helped saving Jews.

CC: "Sir, Mussolini never invaded Ethiopia? Never sided with Hitler?"

Ethiopia was genocidal? About as much as Afghanistan in my opinion.

The goal was not to eradicate Ethiopians but to teach them courtesy with women, more recently known as women's rights. The excuse was customs like a show of bride capture "forced marriages" - as well as, possibly, "female circumcision". I have somewhere heard the Muslims who do that learned it from Ethiopian Christians.

Sided with Hitler? Yes, but not about killing (or even making captives among) Jews.

No Jews were deported from Italy before a date in 1943 known as founding of the Saló Republic. And in that, Mussolini was no longer an ally but a captive puppet of Hitler's.

It may be added that in 1943 Pius XII dealt with Ethiopian cases of "forced marriage" and found evidence of force insufficient for annulment. (Acta Apostolicae Sedis)

One thing he said me struck me: Mgr Lefèbvre, in the Cathedral of Dakar, was dreaming about apostasy and realised there was only ONE solution: transmitting the Sacraments and the Doctrine was not enough, one had to transmit a spirit as well.

OK.

A Christian spirit.

OK.

Because there were just so m ...

No, I must have got this one wrong. I seemed to remember something vaguely synonymous to: just so many who received the sacraments and believed the doctrine but carried so little fruit because they did so in the wrong spirit.

Or, wait again. Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is where we make our sacrifice. We must unite ourselves to Christ. If we do not do so while assisting mass - and this he said - we make God a liar.

Is that so? Is lack of devotion, of whole heartedness, of unreserved offering of self not just irreverent in Holy Mass, but actually a worse offense than not assisting mass at all? If so, why did Church exact of us assistance at Holy Mass each Sunday and each Holiday of obligation?

As far as I can see, his preaching today is very akin to the liturgy in Novus Ordo I try to avoid by going there.

When certain N[ovus]O[rdo] priests say we should confess [in abridged confiteor or remade kyrie] that we have not always lived up to the graces we have been given, I feel bypassed, what about those of us who have actully sinned, like punch someone in the face, who when rejecting red coins was maybe offering to save me the thirty cents I had no yellow coins for? Or who, even if it was not anything we could help - at least it felt so to me - acvtually wanted to punch a priest in the face, because he was praying for a conversion that is impossible, since conversion from sins I had not committed. Not meaning I had committed no sins at all, but meaning I had committed quite other ones.

Such a liturgy says what today's sermon says, or feels like saying, to a man like me: even if you believe all the dogmas, you do not belong here, since you are not as devout as we.

Hans-Georg LundahlBeaubourg/Paris7/XI/2010

Added comment: Re title: Holy Spirit is transmitted by sacraments, and that is a dogma. Not first and foremost by natural efforts to "transmit a spirit".

But I think Dom Gérard did just fine transmitting a spirit in that sense too - only in his case the ones receiving were close disciples, like monks et c.

For a possible hint of Jesus's historicity, Christian authorities relied heavily on a single brief paragraph in the works of the respected Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who was born in 37 AD/CE, served as governor of Galilee and traveled extensively in the very same area where Jesus allegedly lived and taught. If anyone was in a position to report the wonder-workings of a local holy man in his own parents' generation, it was Josephus, a dedicated reporter of minute details. Yet in all his voluminous works, the single paragraph (Ant. 18.3.3)-called the "Testimonium Flavianum" or "TF"-says only that Jesus was

When we see it, it is not very only. It is a very succinct but not misleading testimony. I wish hippies were as correct and only correct about Jesus as this testimonium:

"a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."

- teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure - a Socrates then?

- He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. - So, unusually cosmopolitan for a Jewish Socrates since Elishah, Daniel or Jonah? A prophet?

- He was [the] Christ - now that is even a bit more than a prophet.

- and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross - oops, a cross is a less confortable death than a cup of hemlock! And Socrates was only condemned on popular prejudice, Jesus on instigation of the aristocracy taking trouble to collaborate with a detested occupant to do the job. Did that discourage the movement?

- those that loved him at the first did not forsake him - Judas Ischariot is indeed not among the four first called disciples.

- and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day - not unimportant as concerned with the prophecy of Gamaliel, as recorded in Acts: if it is from God, it will remain, if it is from man it will be destroyed.

This means - if the passage is genuine - that Josephus was either Christian or benevolent doubter, or wrote against his grain. As an open Christian, it is not probable he would have ruled Galilea - is it now? A "closet case Christian" a k a Nicodemus type (a phenomenon gay movement has more problems with than Christians) might have vented his conscience just once briefly. So could a doubter, one who had, up till that moment, decided to wait before deciding and who then did not decide. A man admitting inconvenient truth he hated might have used that tactique too.

The problems with this famous passage are many.

To the anti-Christian writer, there is ONE big problem, if he accepts the passage as genuine, he is forced to admit what he tries to deny, that Jesus was historic.

First of all, it is noticeably out of context with the surrounding material.

Which the writer conveniently enough does not quote.

Second, it evidently did not appear in the early copies of Josephus's works, nor in the second-century version quoted by Church father Origen, who would certainly have mentioned it if it had been there.

Absence from handwritten copies is an overrated argument. They neither had copy-paste send and print-out nor even printing press back then.

The TF does not appear in any known works until the beginning of the fourth century

As quoted, that is. In itself it is, if genuine, from Josephus' lifetime.

and is first quoted by Bishop Eusebius, the enthusiastic advocate of what he apparently called "holy lying" for the greater glory of the Church, known to have been responsible for many interpolations, revisions and blatant forgeries.

And therefore all later quotes are quoting Eusebius? Well, that takes the wind out of the sail of people using "reliable" Eusebius' silence about St Helen's discovery of Holy Cross, against that story. It is after all more convenient to be silent about truth than to lie against it.

Moreover, Josephus was a Jew and would hardly have referred to Jesus's ministry as "the truth" or "wonderful things"; nor would he have called Jesus "the Christ."

What kind of Jew? Not a Talmudic one as later known, of whom that description is true.

Neither could he have mentioned "the tribe of Christians," for there were no Christians in his day. Christianity did not get off the ground until the second century.

What the anti-Christian writer is trying to prove. Before proving it he cannot use this as a critique of Testimonium Flavianum.

Philo Judaeus (20 BCE-50 AD/CE) was born before the beginning of the Christian era and lived until long after Jesus's time. Philo knew Jerusalem well, and would have known of Herod's massacre of children, plus Jesus's miracles, well-attended preachings, triumphal entry parade and crucifixion, with its attendant earthquake, reanimated corpses and many other wonders. He would have heard about the resurrection before many witnesses.

Probably yes. But considering his role, would he have talked about it? First of all, he was an apologist for Old Testament Jewish religion - I will not say Judaism, since that religion began as known now after him, at Jamnia, after destruction of Jerusalem - and part of his arguments was playing down the bloody parts of Old Testament by claiming it was allegorical (after all the destruction of Pharao's army was a delicate subject in Alexandria, where last diadochian ruler, Cleopatra, had ruled Pharaonic style) and Herod's massacre did not quite fit into that programme. Furthermore such a thing is the kind of work authorities tend to hush up, Philo might have heard a rumor, but an obfuscated one. As was so much the case about Katyn massacre until very recently (recommend the film by Wajda, by the way). As for Resurrection, if he heard of it it was very probably by the men who came to Alexandria as converts and missionaries, and who constituted another community than his own or the one he grew up in. He might have thought them right, but left it up to them to speak up on it.

Neither Flavius Josephus nor Philo Judaeus were Jews as we know them now. Jamnia had not yet condemned Christianity as "minim and goyim". Philo used and Flavius had heard of Septuagint, which the Jews of Jamnia condemned. After the destruction of Jerusalem, that took place in year 70, the Jewish rabbis assembled in Jamnia from years 80 to 90 and took a lot of decisions, anti-Roman and anti-Christian. Only from then on is the word "Jew" incompatible with "Christian", as is also seen in the fact that the enemies of Jesus, in Gospels written before Jamnia (Matthew, Mark, Luke) are enumerated as such and such a theologic clan or sacred profession, but in St John, written after Apocalypse, and that Apocalypse written after Jamnia, as "Jews" - a word which in that connexion is not put in Our Lord's own mouth, until he talks to Pilate. But Philo and Flavius were pre-Jamnia.

Philo celebrated Septuaginta day, the day in which God inspired 70 men to make one and same translation of Torah independently of each other, but from Jamnia on Septuaginta day is a "dies nefastus", a "black day" like the "ides of march" to Romans. Flavius, in the beginning of his Antiquitates Judaeorum gives a genealogy from Adam to Noah agreeing with Gospel of St Luke and Septuaginta, whereas extant Masoretic text and Vulgate agree on a shorter one, omitting Cainaan from the descendants of Seth. Still, Flavius is thought as having used the Septuagint in places, but he claims to be translating himself from Hebrew.

The oldest collection of what is now known as Talmud, Mishna, was unknown to both Philo and Flavius, that is indeed from second century, published on order of "Judah the Prince".

lundi 1 novembre 2010

... "Jack Denys" as in Iakkos Dionysius, and "tried to" as in one chapter or so with levitation inspired by Mary Poppins, adding some topsy-turvydom thought appropriate for someone personifying wine. By the way, why are so many Christians attacking Harry Potter but not Mary Poppins? P L Travers was a known adept of Gurdjieff:

She had studied the Gurdjieff System under Jane Heap and in March, with the help of Jessie Orage, she met the mystic Gurdjieff who would have a great effect on her, as well as on several other literary figures.

Now, after such a "literary carreer" in childhood, I maybe should make up for a bit of a Pagan slant in it by countering real Pagan slander on that theme:

The sacrificed god Dionysus, another son of the Heavenly Father, first performed Jesus's miracle of turning water into wine at temples in Sidon and other places, representing the rain of heaven fructifying the vine. In Alexandria, the Dionysian/Christian miracle was demonstrated literally by means of an ingenious system of siphons invented by an engineer named Heron, to enhance the awe of the faithful....

Without even looking it up, how do the siphons of the Alexandria, Heron version, add up to the sealed wine skins of the Cana, Jesus Christ version? Obviously they do not. If perfectly unknown servants seal off perfectly beforehand unseen wine skins, you are in no position to add an ingenious system of siphons even if it was invented by Heron. Probably Our Lord in Egypt heard about that Svengali trick and had an urge one day to make it better ... by a real miracle, which only he could have done. Or Dionysius, if ever he did create such an entity.

... in Old and in New Rome. I hope dearly it did not ceasse to be the case 1054, as it was present in Rome and Écône 1970, and i hope it did not cease to be the case 1988, and that Sts Theresa and Petka are rejoicing together on this day of all saints, as on the byznatine one. WHO holds me as a heretic for this hope?

lundi 25 octobre 2010

me: "5.) Because I prefer the idea that a (insert god of choice) went ALLA-KADABRA-ALLAKAZAM!!!"

I do. If I can insert the one true god in Three Persons and replace alla-kadabra ... with "fiat lux" and stuff that is in the Bible. I definitely do.

JA: >>I definitely do.<<

Christianity does not conflict with evolution. Creationism conflicts with evolution.

me: Meaning you do not consider Creationism included in or implied by Christianity.

I do.

JA: Creationism is a philosophy. It has no scientific merit. It has no religious merit.

Creationism is not implied by Christianity.

Christians believe that God created the universe.

Christians who have an appreciation of science accept that the evidence the natural world is the evidence of Creation - and if the evidence of the natural world appears to conflict with the Creation account in the Bible then it is the interpretation of Genesis which is at fault - and needs to be reinterpreted in the light of the evidence of Creation itself (the natural world).

me: "if the evidence of the natural world appears to conflict with the Creation account in the Bible"

key word: appears

to whom and according to what hermeneutic principles?

JA: Scientific methodology has proved to be exceptionally robust - and is increasingly so.

The application of science is demonstration of the resilience of scientific research.One cannot say that evolution is false and that other branches of science (the application of which our technology fundamentally depends on) are true because the investigative and deductive processes are essentially the same.

Creationists always ask for evidence in scripture that the Creation account in Genesis is not a scientific or literal history - they refuse to see that that is an irrelevance: the evidence of the non-scientific and non-literal nature of the Creation account in Genesis is in nature, not in scripture - and the reason is that Genesis is not a science book.

me: "Scientific methodology has proved to be exceptionally robust - and is increasingly so."

Not about evolutionism.

"The application of science is demonstration of the resilience of scientific research."

The applications that give evidence for "science" do not touch evolutionism, nor heliocentrism/geokinetism. No one has proven that geocentrics or creationists would be logically obliged to disbelieve in television, internet, bacteriology or gynaecology.

"One cannot say that evolution is false and that other branches of science (the application of which our technology fundamentally depends on) are true because the investigative and deductive processes are essentially the same."

1838 is discovered that very many stars do have a movement that circles in a year, same direction as sun, the biggest one angle being 0.76 seconds, and all others smaller, most stars still not having one recognisable angle (at least that was the case back in 1980, when the measurable angle parallaxes were for "tens of thousands of stars" among the hundreds of thousand known).

The methodology by which interpretation "stars stand still, mostly, and earth moves, and different observed movements are due to different distance" is preferred over "stars are moved by heavenly dancers" is not any technological one, except such as are applicable to dead matter alone, i e a denial of angelic hypothesis (the old scholastic one) in the principle of research rather than in application. Similarily for C14 datings exceeding Biblical chronology preference of interpretation "C14 was same proportion in athmosphere and present very much lower proportion is entirely due to old age" over interpretation "C14 was back close to creation lower proportion in atmosphere, which accounts for lower proportion now, even without exceeding Biblical chronology".

"Creationists always..."

Do not tell me what creationists always do, deal with what I do - in proving, asking, explaining, challenging.

"...ask for evidence in scripture that the Creation account in Genesis is not a scientific or literal history - they refuse to see that that is an irrelevance: the evidence of the non-scientific and non-literal nature of the Creation account in Genesis is in nature, not in scripture - and the reason is that Genesis is not a science book."

Genesis neither is nor purports to be a science book, however it was for most of its existence accepted by considerable communities as literal history. Which indirectly makes it scientifically relevant.

What you are saying is that Jews from Moses to Jesus and Christians from Jesus to Darwin and Spencer got it wrong. I say that is not compatible with Christianity.

@ CD saying "Hey if you got proof that evolution is false give me some ideas.I already have some maybe we can share some ideas"

Check this out: - a general checkout on chromosome numbers was suggested by Kent Hovind, but I use it in a different way. (Yes, it is my post, a composite of smaller posts on another of my blogs)

JA: >>Do not tell me what creationists always do, deal with what I do - in proving, asking, explaining, challenging.<<

If was you who brought up hermeneutic principals - as do many Creationists I have discussed these issues with.

I know about parallax - I have studied astronomy for over 40 years.Carbon dating is only used for comparatively recent geology - other radiometric dating techniques are used, and used reliably, for older dating.

>>Which indirectly makes it scientifically relevant.<<

Wrong. SCripture has nothing to do with science.

Scripture is about interpersonal relationships - and the sole purpose of Genesis is to set the context for scripture.

In common with most (all?) Creationists you are clearly a "Genesis Christian" rather than a Gospel Christian.

>>What you are saying is that Jews from Moses to Jesus and Christians from Jesus to Darwin and Spencer got it wrong. I say that is not compatible with Christianity.<<

No. What I am saying is that the Bible is not about science. Genesis is not a history. Genesis sets the context for *your* personal relationship with God, and with your neighbour.

me: A Gospel Christian IS a Genesis Christian, since Gospels tell us Christ was a Genesis Hebrew.

Gospel is not limited to my personal relationship with God or man, though it includes that, it is reliable history as in Resurrection of Christ AND sayings of what He really said. And that includes historicity of Adam and Eve. He very specifically referred to Genesis History when talking about marriage.

Your Biblical hermeneutics are very clearly not those of the Catholic Church Fathers.You avoided questions brought up about parallax (though you studied Astronomy for fourty years) and C14.

1) Can the movement currently interpreted as a parallax be interpreted as something other, like the dance of angels to honour God?

2) Are the older radiometric age datings you used to corroborate C14 as implying earth was too old for the doubt I brought up maybe subject to similar doubts as C14 itself?

I also go back to your previous answer, where you claimed there were no methodological difference between the science used in technology - as electronics, medicine - and the one used in heliocentrism and evolutionism. There is ONE clear difference:

Medicine students study bacteria that are there here before them and now while they are being studied, electricians study currents that are similarily circumscribed in time and space BUT evolution is about billions of years ago and heliocentrism is about 4 to 4 billion light years away. Except the kind of stuff that has also geocentric and creationist interpretations.

JA: Jesus's reference to the Old Testament was in respect of its teaching. Not its historicity. A teaching need not be historically accurate in order to convey the truth.

And the truth is that when Genesis talks about Adam, it is talking about you. When it talks about the serpent it is talking about sin acting on you.

The whole point of the Bible - and in particular of the Gospel, are the relationships. The whole point of the death and Resurrection of Jesus was God's desire for that relationship between God and man (specifically you, the reader) which man (specifically you, the reader) broke through his own fault be fixed. It is not Adam's sin, but yours for which Christ died. It does not matter that Adam never existed historically, but it is vitally important that you exist historically, and that Christ exists historically, to repair the relationship with God, which you broke.

me: "Jesus's reference to the Old Testament was in respect of its teaching. Not its historicity"

That is clearly NOT a limitation the Gospel brings out. Btw, I have updated the post you answered.

"The _whole_ point of the Bible - and in particular of the Gospel, are the relationships."

As excluding historicity? NO.

There are four senses*, not just one, and the fact that your favourite one is not the literal does not make your exegesis less lopsided.

*literal/historicprophetic as in OT pointing to Christmoral - your favAND anagogic as in NT pointing to Heaven

dimanche 24 octobre 2010

First reply: Young Earth, doubtful. We have an education system that works, here. I've met a few theistic evolutionists though.

Second reply: I'm afraid we do have creationists, they're just less arrogant

Third reply, by the one I opposed after: Creationism is a very American phenomenon unfortunately for us Americans. It's embarrassing. I hear Australia is infested as well. But the rest of the world, they are a huge minority.

Me: Sweden.

I know that "education system that works". I also knows that it works among other things by:

- teacher letting young earth creationists have part of his say once- teacher then misunderstanding- young earth creationist correcting teacher about misnuderstanding- teacher saying the reply does not prove creationism true- young earth creationist then trying to say that was not the purpose of his second say and trying to get beack but getting interrupted by teacher who declares there is no time for debates with creationism

Was that pupil. Am still creationist.

IIId replier: Well, Hans, there is only so much time for teaching. Might as well use that time discussing reality. BTW, was this a science class? If so then creationism is very inappropriate. Science is science. And creationism is not science. If it is a philosophy class, then it is all a huge waste of time anyway. And I am sure most kids in the room were more than a little uncomfortable with your display of schizophrenia. You are still schizophrenic.

A teacher misunderstanding creationism? I'm sure they understood completely in the definition but not in the reasoning.

me:"Might as well use that time discussing reality."

Precisely my point.

"BTW, was this a science class?"

Yes.

"If so then creationism is very inappropriate. Science is science. And creationism is not science."

Neither is evolutionism.

"And I am sure most kids in the room were more than a little uncomfortable with your display of schizophrenia. You are still schizophrenic."

No. You are a big fat bully, but on internet it does not quite work that way. Even if there are big fat bullies in psychiatric wards who will bully patients about creationism.

"A teacher misunderstanding creationism? I'm sure they understood completely in the definition but not in the reasoning."

It was not they, it was one. My reasoning was not complex. Only not what "they" - as in he - had been taught to expect from a creationist.

IIId replier: Wow, christianity in purity, right here. He will delete this in embarrassment within 24 hours. I hope he doesn't. For all to see.

Me: I just played with the thought of deleting it and writing something you might get an ever greater choke from.

Meanwhile, your hate speech - doubly, against me [or friend] and against a religious group [creationists in previous posts, christians in this one of yours] - has been reported in both of your posts. So long as it is not deleted, it is however for display.